Super Wing Commander
Super Wing Commander contains the memoirs of Jason Armstrong a pilot of the (who flew in missions alongside the war's top twenty aces including Christopher Blair, Carl T. LaFong, and Todd Marshall).Star*Soldier, pg 7, 26 Super Wing Commander is a remake of Wing Commander I with additional events/new cutcenes added (an additional side plot and Missions concerning an early Kilrathi prototype cloaked fighter), and a new and different additional campaign: Secret Missions 1.5 involving the destruction of the shipyards where the Sivar was built. Behind the scenes :"missile rack" - The unspoken sentiment being that the Super Wing Commander Dralthi, which used the same 3D model as the Dralthi Mk. VII, *did* have the rack -- so is the Drakhri a pre-WC1 ship? Also, over-cockpit missiles (sans rack) are seen in Wing Commander Academy. :"Etienne 'Doomsday' Montclair - Doomsday was introduced way back in Secret Missions 2 (that's his actual picture from Wing Commander II). The bio refers to his main character point (which he lost in False Colors - no one noticed that) and touches on a bit of a problem. Because of his already-awkward Super Wing Commander/SegaCD bio, Doomsday would be 81 in 2701. I basically had to choose between having some familiar second-tier faces who were really really old for some reason or making up entirely new characters, and I went with the former. I'll point out how I try to explain this later. :"Armstrong and LaFong" - I love this joke and I get the feeling everyone else hates it. Armstrong and LaFong were alternate names for Blair, used in Super Wing Commander and the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide respectively. This is actually addressing a real book, since the conceit of that latter guide is that now-octogenerian LaFong has written his memoirs and you're reading them. Sorta contradicts Blair's death, too, if they're the same character... :"Ranger" - Originally Mike "Ranger" Unknown from the Super Wing Commander introduction :"Kur 'Human-Killer' nar Tr'k H'hra" - I chose to do a bio on Kur because I always wanted to know more about the Kilrathi aces in Wing Commander II. Three of them play a major role in the plot (Thrakhath, Khasra and Jazz)... but the other two are only mentioned after they show up (because WC2 had no Claw Marks-style manual) and then only briefly. His clan is new, my parallel to the Super Wing Commander manual - it's taken from one of the otherwise unmentioned systems on the Wing Commander Universe map. His picture is the Wing Commander II 'Drakhai/ace' VDU. :"Ja'targk clan" - This clan was introduced in the Super Wing Commander version of Claw Marks, where Khajja the Fang's full name was listed for the first time. :Beyond that - I'm a Wing Commander fan and not a graphic artist, so one sort of tribute I wanted to include was to seamlessly (which is to say while ignoring the elephant in the room) include multiple Wing Commander styles in the manual. I wanted live actors and drawings and talking heads coexisting and for the booklet to act like there was absolutely no problem with them all appearing together. I think this section was especially well accepted by casual fans, since it's neat to see the talking heads again... (ahh! I'm hitting myself for not including a Super Wing Commander shot right now.) :CONCEPT: These pages were planned early on, as a maneuvers page was integral to Claw Marks... and Wing Commander Arena relies even more on 'special' maneuvers which are somewhat akin to those found in a fighting game. As you can see we're using original Scimitar line art positioned in different ways -- that's because several games (including Super Wing Commander!) reuse the classic 'Scim as the example fighter for these articles. Other elements (arrows and such) are taken from the SWC manual.